Category: Rock Listicles
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30 Essential Rock Debut Albums | A Personal Ranking
This post will most likely set a record for quickest time from ideation to execution. I just finished a two-part series that covered the 250+ best rock debut albums of all time and decided to crystalize my top 30 because there’s a lot of flesh in the nooks and crannies. Like all BSM listicles, I’ve…
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Best Rock Debut Albums (1980—2020)
Part 2 of a two-part series covering the best rock debut albums of all time. In the music business, first impressions are everything; but as we enter the modern rock era (1980 to 2020), the margin for error slowly disappeared. During the classic rock era, call it 1956 through 1979, record labels would routinely bankroll…
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Best Rock Debut Albums from the ’50s, ’60s & ’70s
Part 1 of a two-part series covering the best rock debut albums of all time. First impressions are generally important in life and music. Rock bands always want to put their best foot forward, so to speak, if they should ever be so lucky to record and release a debut album. The problem is some…
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20 Van Halen Deep Cuts Only True Fans Know (2026 Update)
The David Lee Roth-era(s) of Van Halen spawned 7 albums and 98 songs, with roughly 25 songs receiving heavy radio airplay. Considering Van Halen’s influence and popularity, it’s hard to say anything they ever did—especially in the DLR era—could be “under-appreciated.” The six classic albums with Roth have sold 50+ million copies (worldwide). It’s safe…
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32 Essential Hard Rock Bands (According to Me)
Rock, in all its subgenre confusion, is my favorite kind of music and pretty much the only music I enjoy at home. Roughly half of my favorite bands are hard rock, and 8 of my 10 favorite albums fall within the hard rock genre or land somewhere in the vicinity of hard rock-adjacent, e.g., Never…
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32 Songs About Family
When I consider songs about family, I’m drawn to oddball perspectives and appalled by the populist feelgood drivel of “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge and “Daughters” by John Mayer. However, having a 14-year-old son is a daily reminder that some people didn’t grow up watching All in the Family and Different Strokes, so these…
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I’m Not Here for That: The Most Overrated Rock Bands of All Time
Here’s your daily reminder that opinions about music are essentially worthless, and anything I have to say about the most overrated rock bands of all time is not going to change your life or your mind. I’m here for entertainment purposes only. However, it’s fair to say that I’ve put a lot of thought into…
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Calling Bullsh*t: 25 Overrated Rock Albums
As a rule, Black Sunshine Media is a good karma website, meaning, I don’t write negative stuff unless it’s exclusively within the context (or boundaries) of whatever I’m writing about. For example, in Top Rock Guitarists of All Time (According to Me), I mention some overrated players and brief reasons for my opinion, but the…
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Top Rock Music Producers of the 1990s and 2000s
[Grandpa enters the room and slumps into an easy chair. He slowly pivots his head toward the camera, lowering his gaze.] You see, I have a love/hate relationship with rock music from the 1990s to present, and likewise, a vague sense of ambivalence for the top rock music producers of the digital era. The problem…
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25 Songs About Sex
Seventy percent of rock music is fundamentally and/or tangentially about sex. The other 30 percent of rock music is about guys who can’t seem to get any sex. The phrase “rocking and rolling” originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean as a sexual analogy. Likewise, the subtext of “boy meets girl” is…
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Top 60 Rock Keyboardists (According to Me)
I’ve been reluctant to publish this post about rock keyboard players—or keyboardists—because technically and theoretically, I’m not a pianist or keyboardist. If somebody asks, yes, I can play keyboards, but I’m no Edgar Winter. However, piano was the first instrument I learned to play, before drums or guitar. Keyboard Heroes Unlike guitar and drums, I…
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150+ Yacht Rock and/or Pool Party Songs to Set the Tone
Do you have a boat with a sound system that needs a rock-oriented playlist for your next soireé at sea? Are you planning an adult pool party but don’t have time to curate a soundtrack? Having some friends over tonight to guzzle some cocktails and talk shit about each other? You’ve come to the right…
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Top 50 Progressive Rock Guitarists (According to Me)
I don’t consider myself a progressive rock guitarist, but prog is an important part of my skill set. The verse section of “The Spirit of Radio” by Rush was the first lick I learned to play by ear. Yessongs (1973) was the first live album I ever owned. I legit studied classical guitar for two…
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Top 30 Alternative Rock Guitarists (According to Me)
Alternative rock is mostly guitar-centric, so it’s no surprise that the genre is loaded with talent. I’ve got my favorites because I basically grew up during the hey-days of alternative (1983–1999), and the closely related genres of new wave and post-punk. There’s a lot of crossover between genres but, like everything else, after writing so…
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Top Progressive Rock Albums of All Time (According to Me)
Progressive rock emerged in the late 1960s when rock musicians were empowered to move away from the singles format and into the album era, and likewise, allowed to explore conceptual and instrumental boundaries. This artistic and commercial freedom resulted in a tsunami of progressive rock albums during its peak between 1971–1976, when hundreds, maybe thousands,…
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Top 50+ Alternative Rock Albums (According to Me)
Like many comparable types of rock music, alternative rock music went through phases or waves of emergence, peak saturation, and ultimate decline. Our task is to parse and evaluate the best albums from the period, which isn’t easy. It begs a bigger question: What is alternative rock? Modern rock bands are still making what we…
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25 Songs About Chicago
Chicago is my hometown. Born on the West Side and raised in the suburbs of DuPage County, I spent the first 30 years of my life in the Windy City, including a five-year stretch on the North Side (Bucktown). I miss my city every day. To be honest, I mostly miss the food and the…
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Rejected! Songs That Didn’t Make the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Original motion picture soundtracks (OSTs) can be wildly inconsistent in terms of listening value and experience. Sometimes, they include (many of) the songs played in the movie, such as Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Purple Rain (1984). Others, like the Star Wars OSTs by John Williams—one of the most recognizable and influential scores in cinematic…
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150+ Rock Memoirs: The Ultimate List
Have you ever wondered why there’s been a two-decade wave of rock star memoirs and autobiographies on the bookshelves and in our virtual bookstores? We’ve compiled the ultimate list of the best rock memoirs to demonstrate the incredible variety of musicians who’ve added “author” to their resumés. But first, let’s understand why this phenomenon is…
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Get Their Greatest Hits: 50+ Rock Bands Best Experienced Through Compilation Albums
Some rock bands are built for albums. They reward patience, headphones, liner notes, and the kind of long-distance devotion that only comes from growing up with their music. Other bands? They require a specialized type of curation. This post is about the second group—the artists whose best selves appear when someone else trims the fat.…
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25 Songs About the Moon
The moon is one of the more popular themes in popular music. Songs about the moon (or moon-adjacent) are not quite in the “love” category of blanket coverage, but significantly more popular than, say, songs about Chicago, family, or Japan, or even cats and dogs. The moon is a popular subject because it sounds good…
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Top 50 Rock Drummers of All Time (According to Me)
We’ve covered three of the Big Four positions in rock music—vocals, guitar, and bass—so it’s time to list the top rock drummers of all time (according to me). But before we get to the list, you deserve some backstory, and, of course, I’m increasingly fond of an early bird spoiler. My number one pick is…
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Top 50 Rock Bassists of All Time (According to Me)
Much in the same way I rate guitar players by their influence on my playing, rock bassists are only as good as their best line—the one that sticks with me. Though I mostly came up as a guitarist, from the mid-1990s to the present, I played bass in Golden Tones and on all my solo…
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25 Songs About Japan
From Buck Owens to The Flaming Lips, artists have been singing about Japan for decades—sometimes as wide-eyed tourists, sometimes as dreamers, and too many times as creepy reports of the Asian fetish. This list vaguely explores how musicians across genres have (mis)interpreted the country as both place and idea: a symbol of distance, fantasy, and modern…
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25 Songs About Friends
Sometimes when I’m creating these lists, there’s a shocker at the beginning. For example, in 25 Songs About California, I open with a spiel about not including “Hotel California”, an obvious choice that appears on every other list. Likewise, in 25 Songs About New York, I start by telling the reader that you’re not gonna…